Although the term voidness appears primarily in the Mahayana systems, we may use the term loosely to refer to both the lack of an impossible soul of a person (gang-zag-gi bdag-med, selflessness of a person, identitylessness of a person) and the lack of an impossible soul of phenomena (chos-kyi bdag-med, selflessness of phenomena, identitylessness of phenomena), Each tenet system specifies, within the context of its own definitions, the ways of existing and “souls” that are impossible.

The conceptual categories may be: merely an audio category, as in the case of thinking the word voidness without having any idea of what it means, or both an audio category and a meaning category, as in the case of thinking the word voidness together with a meaning associated with the word, even if that meaning is inaccurate.